LivingSocial
- 🦄Became a unicorn2011
- 📈Peak valuation$6 Billion ’11
- 💔Became a Unitard2014
- 💸Last valuation~$60M
The rise & fall
6 moments · 2007–2016The key moments.
How it happened
LivingSocial was the chief rival to Groupon in the daily-deals craze, reaching a valuation as high as ~$6B in 2011 with backing from Amazon (which took a $175M stake) and a J.P. Morgan-led round.
The daily-deals model proved faddish and unprofitable: growth reversed, Amazon wrote down its investment by about $905M, and a 2013 financing marked LivingSocial at roughly a quarter of its peak. After years of shrinkage and layoffs, it was sold to Groupon in 2016 for a 'non-material' sum — effectively wiping out its once-enormous valuation.
Glassdoor reviews from the daily-deals heyday were dominated by sales-floor churn and management complaints as the business shrank toward its Groupon sale.
Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.
Source: Bloomberg / GeekWire / Yahoo Finance (peak ~$6B 2011, $176M Series F led by J.P. Morgan; Amazon's $175M stake led to a ~$905M write-down; marked to ~$1.5B 2013; sold to Groupon for a non-material amount 2016)
Founders
- Tim O'ShaughnessyCo-founder & CEO who led LivingSocial to its peak; stepped down early 2014 (sold to Groupon 2016)
- Eddie Frederickco-founder & president (stepped down 2012)
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.
Disclosed investors (11)
Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.
* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard
